Lance of Earth and Sky

When Vidarian emerged from the tent, Thalnarra was waiting for him. // Come with me. There's someone I want you to meet. //

She turned northwest and Vidarian followed with Rai pacing alongside him. Thinking of Meleaar, he wondered whom she meant for him to meet, and whether he would have to revise his notions of gryphons again. It seemed foolish in retrospect to think that they should be contained to the types of the handful he'd met, and now his mind roved in speculation.

But as they passed beyond the command tents, busy with gryphons and seridi moving among them with purpose, the next path she chose led them to a different “village” of tents, these positioned much more closely together. Gryphons moved here, too, trotting down the narrow roads, often with burdens hanging from their beaks or strapped to harnesses at their sides, but the farther they went, the more the population changed to human.

A mixture of faces turned to look as they passed, mostly dark of hair, but with the occasional blond or mop of red. Very few had any identifiable ethnicity that Vidarian could recognize, and none of them wore clothing he had ever seen before. They were dressed predominantly in leather or doeskin, more varieties than he could count, with decorations of feathers—small and large—and beads of precious stone. They paused in their work—blacksmithing, carpentry, cloth weaving—as Vidarian passed, staring at him almost as openly as they stared at Rai.

Thalnarra threaded her way through the tents, bringing them around to the far side of the encampment and a lean-to surrounded by racks of leather. There were straps of all sizes, and more varieties and treatments of animal hide than he'd seen on all the villagers so far. A man sat on a worn leather stool in the center of it all, working rivets into a piece of thick harness. Thalnarra scratched on a bit of thick hide stretched across a little rack for that purpose, and the man looked up, then stood and approached.

His thick, black hair falling in unruly waves to his shoulders would have been the envy of many an imperial countess. The leather he wore was extraordinarily fine, its origin animal unidentifiable, and a strap of darker hide across his chest was covered with cabochons of amber, each with a tiny feather trapped inside. He bowed first to Thalnarra, and when he turned to Vidarian, his silver eyes were intent but wild, untrusting.

// Kormir, this is Captain Vidarian Rulorat, and this is the shapechanger I told you about. // To Vidarian's surprise, Thalnarra turned as she spoke, dipping her head at Rai.

Kormir looked from Vidarian to Thalnarra, and then to Rai. “It is true, then?” He knelt and held his hand out to Rai, who crept forward with a hesitant wave of his tail, and sniffed.

// Kormir is the finest skin-worker in my pride, and in the entire flight, // Thalnarra said, and Kormir waved his hand negligently. There was something warmer in Thalnarra's tone than respect for a craftsman; a lilt of vanilla and kava steam.

“She shows partiality to her ward. It is unseemly.” Kormir's eyes twinkled as he turned back on his heels to Thalnarra and swatted at her foreleg. Vidarian had never seen any human so forward with a gryphon before.

// You have been kinsman for a decade now. I am therefore unbiased. // She leaned her head down to Kormir, nudging his shoulder.

Kormir shook his head, pushing at Thalnarra's beak. “It is good to see you, akrinha.”

Thalnarra preened a piece of Kormir's hair, then turned her head toward Rai. // Go on, little one, // she said, gesturing at Rai with her beak. // Show him what you can do. //

“Come around on him, have you?” Vidarian asked.

// Even a gryphon eventually accepts being out-stubborned. //

“Or learns to respect creatures that grow substantially bigger than them?”

Rai shuffled backward, then became the dragon, stretching behind into the scrub brush clearing to their west. He crouched in the dry weeds, long, spiked tail swishing like a cat's, rather to the detriment of the foliage. His huge head was now even with Kormir, who drew in his breath.

// It should be impossible, // Thalnarra said, with a fresh rosemary note of bemusement that said she had grown used to contemplating impossibilities. // In five thousand years there has never been a dragon shapechanger. I verified this with Kree. It must have been the influence of the Gate. //

“He is stunning,” Kormir said, and then, to Vidarian's surprise, eeled up next to Rai and began feeling at his legs, his barrel, his wings. Rai's head jerked upward and curved on a swanlike neck to look at him, but did not intervene. “I would be honored to make you a harness and saddle, if you would allow it,” he told Rai, patting him on the shoulder.

Rai's horned head lifted again with surprise, then looked to Vidarian before returning to nod at Kormir.

// I hoped you might. You will have an assistant, if you'd like. My new ward. //

Kormir gave a little hop and a whoop, startling Rai, then apologized, but turned immediately back to Thalnarra. “This is excellent news! They said you would never!”

// Come, he will want to meet you, and then you can see to this harness. // Thalnarra deftly ignored the young man's effusiveness, but her cheek-feathers puffed. Kormir stood, brushing his hands on his trousers, beaming, and Thalnarra turned back to Vidarian. // We will take care of Rai. You should go to Malinai. He has asked for you. //


Malinai was a dying gryphon.

When Vidarian asked for him, gryphons and humans alike pointed with solemnity at a red stone plateau to the south. None would discuss Malinai, but one of them gave him a waterskin and told him to ration it. It was a long, hot trek followed by a climb hundreds of feet in altitude, back and forth along the sage-bordered switchback trails that led up to the summit.

At the top a persistent wind whipped, cooling his skin but drying his tongue almost instantly. And there, across the stone, was Malinai.

The old gryphon was slow to move, and under the constant beat of the sun overhead it was hard not to emulate him. His feathers at one time may have been a rich russet red, with cream secondaries banded with black, but here the sun had bleached them to cream and white with delicate tan striping. With a shiver Vidarian realized he was the same type of gryphon as his friends Kaltak and Ishrak; was this the aged fate that awaited them?

“Malinai, sir?” Vidarian asked, when he approached the gryphon and his eyes remained closed.

// I give myself to the sky and the sun. They are almost done devouring me. You interrupt my sacred journey. // The voice was pale as powder, but complex, with notes of sage and burning rock, spearmint and citrus.

“They—said that you sent for me,” Vidarian said, hoping desperately the old gryphon wasn't senile.

The narrow slits of the gryphon's eyes opened, revealing vivid orange-umber eyes beneath. // Did I? //

Then, without warning, he lashed out with an arm of fire energy, scorching the ground just to the left of Vidarian's feet. He tried to stop it, to lift his recalcitrant fire magic up to deflect the blow, but could not move in time.

// Your fire is unruly! Whoever trained you should be ashamed. //

“One of your people trained me,” Vidiarian grunted, brushing at soot from his trouser leg.

// Then I fear for our future, // Malinai said, his eyes sliding shut again. // I am almost gone to the goddess. She fills me with light. // At the last of his words, his voice took on a strange harmonic tone, as if two twins sang the words with him. // What would you ask of Ele'cherath, light of the world, goddess of the sun? //

“I—” Vidarian began, but could not pull the words out of his dry throat. He coughed, then tried again. “I would ask her to release my potential,” he pointed up at the Luminous, where Endera and her apprentices were drilling, little flashes of fire magic arcing into the air. “To give me control over the warring elements that she released within me.”

// You do not need a goddess for that! // The gryphon growled, his voice returning to a single pitch. His eyes opened again, but squinting, and he tilted his rough-feathered head to one side, dissecting Vidarian. // You know what you must do. You have seen it. //

“Thalnarra told me that what I witnessed was not possible,” he said, fighting to keep bitterness from his voice.

// The young are creatures of certainty, // Malinai said, and Vidarian had to repeat the words to himself before he realized the old gryphon was talking about Thalnarra. // They are governed and reassured by rules and their heritage. It is to battle against the great fear in their hearts, the true unnamed certainty that their parents and their elders have left them, bequeathing the world into their claws. //

“I'm not sure I understand how that relates to the physical effects of the elements.”

Malinai's beak clacked dissatisfaction, a hollow sound like an old dry bone. // Reality—physical effects—are mostly what we perceive them to be. And, it often follows, what we expect them to be. //

“That's not my experience,” Vidarian said carefully, swallowing annoyance. “If I drop a rock on the ground—” he picked up a triangular stone, then dropped it, “perceiving that it did not fall will not keep it in the air.”

// It will not, // Malinai agreed. // But you can perceive that the ground instead rises to meet the stone, or that the stone is drawn to the center of the world, which happens to be toward the ground, and these will cause your realities to be quite different. //

“And that means…?” He was beginning to grow impatient, and incredulous that a creature who had so little life remaining could be so indirect.

The great beak clacked again, and Malinai roused his feathers, shaking off a small cloud of dust and several loose secondaries that were caught and spun about by the wind. // Your culture, Thalnarra's culture, expects the elements to behave a certain way. She needs them to behave. Your Qui opponent perceived reality differently. //

“So you're saying I just need to think about my elements and they'll be happy?”

// No, // Malinai said, as if speaking to a particularly slow student. // I'm saying it behooves you to speak with a Qui elementalist. //

“That's become rather complicated, thanks to the war.”

// There are three Qui elementalists in this camp, // Malinai said, and Vidarian's heart lifted, but then, // but none of them have the pair of elements you require. // Frustration flickered up again, but then— // You'll have to make do with me. //

“You?”

// Yes, but I'll need your assistance. I have a flicker of water ability, but not nearly enough to demonstrate anything up here. You're going to have to channel some to me if you want a demonstration. //

“Channel…?”

// They haven't even taught you basic conduitry? A kitten in straw knows how to conduit. //

“There hasn't been time,” Vidarian began.

// Excuses! // The gryphon shook his feathers again, and Vidarian was afraid he was going to lose all he had if he kept it up. // Now, hand me your water energy. Just—draw some together, and push it toward me. Be ready to release it. //

Vidarian gamely pulled the water out of the air, drying it even more than it had been before, and shaped it into a column of water. As it had before, his fire sense reared up in him, hissing, striking. He gritted his teeth, and passed the water toward Malinai, ready to let it go.

Suddenly the water lifted away from him, and despite being warned, he was pulled with it, and nearly stumbled. He let it go just in time, and the water moved away from him, though a thread remained with which he could feed more energy to it to keep it alive. Malinai turned it deftly in the air, clicking his tongue in approval, and then drew out his own fire: a bright, pure flame so strong and true it stirred memories of love in Vidarian's chest.

Then there was one energy, not two; a braided, fused thing that amplified both of the elements, so bright he had to force himself not to look away.

“That's it!” Vidarian exclaimed, so shocked that he dropped the water thread. Malinai's energy flashed bright, then vanished, leaving spots across Vidarian's eyes.

// Again, // Malinai barked.

Once more Vidarian drew the water, this time passing it more gracefully to Malinai. He watched intently, staring so fiercely at the two elements that a little needle of pain opened between his eyebrows.

Without moving, somehow the two energies tilted to one side—or perhaps it was the world that tilted—and then fell together, interlocking into a band of brilliant white. Malinai passed it back to Vidarian, who took it reverently in his elemental “hands,” and turned it, inspected it. Inside was a world of possibility, of brightness, of visions yet to be coalesced. And for the first time since the fire goddess had awakened his water magic, his soul stilled, and was at peace.

// Very good, // Malinai said softly, and banished his fire magic with a whisper. Vidarian drew the water back into himself, released it back into the air as mist, and sighed. // You'll be able to do that again, I'll wager. //

Without realizing it, Vidarian had kept his eyes strained open, and now they stung with dryness. He blinked them several times.

// Go now, // Malinai said, fluffing out his wings and turning to tuck his beak between them. // I must return to my meditations. // His voice had thinned to vellum, translucent as spring frost.

“Thank you, sir,” Vidarian bowed, holding his head low for a long moment before he straightened. The gryphon did not move, and after several moments he turned and went back to the trail.

// Vidarian, // Malinai said, and he looked back. // Tell your mistress I am coming, and I am not afraid. //

The wind stirred stronger, and the old gryphon stared at Vidarian, the sun shining through his thin feathers, already more than half a ghost. Despite his insubstantiality, now Malinai looked deeply at him, his orange eyes full of fire and will. “I will, sir,” Vidarian said softly.